Human migration from gentrification, conflict and economic hardship, and increasingly climate change, are frequently cited as defining challenges of the 21st century. Regardless of cause, migration disproportionately impacts indigenous peoples. Since 2016, Afro Yaqui Music Collective has worked to support indigenous activists and migrant communities across the globe. The collective’s artist-activism, or artivism, routinely takes the form of live performances at social justice concerts, musical protests, and participation in activists conferences throughout the world. In conjunction with their performances, Afro Yaqui has developed solidarity building partnerships with indigenous and migrant activists in Mexico, Syria/Kurdistan, and Tanzania. Mirror Butterfly: The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite (innova, 2019) presents a live recording of a vibrant Jazz opera that Afro Yaqui constructed through close collaboration with its activist partners. Centering the voices of three female indigenous and migrant activist, the opera delivers a powerful narrative of solidarity and resistance.
Mirror Butterfly is constructed from interviews, stories, parables, characters, and imagery that are emblematic of Afro Yaqui’s activist partners and the cultures they fight to preserve. The opera’s plot loosely follows a three-part Mayan parable, in which elemental forces struggle against the “Sword,” an embodiment of colonial oppression. In Afro Yaqui’s retelling, these elemental forces are recast as characterizations of the collective’s activist partners. Ruth Margraff’s libretto finds a musical and poetic quality as she weaves these characters into a fantastical world with multiple layers of metaphors and symbols. Ben Barson’s score creates an equally dense and allusive counterpoint through the diverse instrumentation and experiences of Afro Yaqui’s “post-colonial big band.” Drawing from collective’s experience in musical traditions from the African Diaspora, Mexico, Cuba, and China, Barson’s score blurs the lines between jazz, funk, and hip-hop.
Afro Yaqui Music Collective–Photo courtesy www.afroyaquimusiccollective.com
Mirror Butterfly begins with a saxophone quartet (including Barson on baritone saxophone) improvising with visceral timbral effects and virtuosic harmonic glisses against an ethereal electronic soundscape. Marina Celander’s sensitive, expository narration gives way to the opera’s first scene, in which a chorus of mushrooms represents the diverse global network of migrant activists. The mushroom choruses’ songs of solidarity in irregular meters are quickly joined by a funk-inspired ensemble. As the funk ensemble grows more cacophonous, the Sword, brilliantly performed by Drew Bayura, enters, and begins destroying the idyllic environment in which the mushrooms lived, replacing it with cash crops, and oppressive labor systems. Throughout this scene and the entirety of the opera, Celander and Bayura’s narration is impeccably clear and wonderfully expressive. Barson’s score positions the duo’s lines precisely within a driving, fully saturated, rhythmic and harmonic textures which comes to signify the Sword’s destructive power.
The second act introduces the Mulberry Tree, a figure inspired by radical Afro-diasporic multimedia artist-activist Charlotte Hill O’Neal (Mama C). Jin Yang’s sensational pipa playing underscores Kelsey Robison’s soulful performance as the Mulberry tree, who sings of a utopic returning of “the land to those who work the land.” The funk ensemble heralds the return of the Sword, this time with a more expansive vamp section for a head banging, jaw dropping saxophone solo.
The third act begins as the Sword furiously strikes down the Mulberry Tree, which is transformed into a Stoneflower, a character inspired by Azize Aslan, a member of the Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey and Syria. Performed by hip-hop artist Nejma Nefertiti, the Stoneflower withstands the Sword’s brutality, and raps back a call for labor solidarity. Throughout the movement, Nefertiti effortlessly negotiates polyrhythmic textures, which increase in complexity as the Stoneflower finally cracks the Sword’s blade.
Afro Yaqui Music Collective–Photo courtesy www.afroyaquimusiccollective.com
The fourth and final scene begins with an extended aria by the final character, the Four Mirror Butterfly. This bilingual aria showcases Gizelxanath Rodriguez’s silky operatic voice as well as a nuanced command of her ancestral Yaqui dialect. Rodriguez’s performance and the Four Mirror Butterfly character itself are inspired by Reyna Lourdes Anguamea, a Yaqui-Mexican activist lawyer. In a final conflict, the Four Mirror butterfly reanimates the Stoneflower and the Mullberry tree to vanquish the Sword by dissolving him in water. As the Sword fades, he asks, “what good is all this purposeless power with no purpose?” Following a brief reprise of the utopic Pipa-inflected Mulberry tree melodies, Celander tenderly speaks, “here, you won’t need money… we won’t ask when you’re leaving, or where you’ll go… “ before promising relief from struggle with the coming dawn.
To the uniformed listener, Mirror Butterfly is still utterly compelling, comprehensible, and direct regarding its message. However, its nuance all but requires familiarity with the indigenous cultures and migrant movements it references. Some might consider this a drawback, but within the context of Afro Yaqui’s artivism, this is a call to action. To become educated about the impact climate change has on indigenous peoples. To listen more carefully to the “renaissance” of street band music and activists of which Afro Yaqui’s members are an integral part. And, to more closely consider a compassionate, cosmopolitan ethic, which exercises hospitality to migrants and displaced peoples.
